The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to controlling the temperature of a hard drive in an information handling system.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As IHSs increase in performance, the cooling needs of the IHS increase as well. Some components of the IHS, such as the hard disk drive (HDD), provide a number of challenges with regards to their cooling. HDDs come in a variety of capacities, speeds, and designs, all of which effect their thermal performance and acoustics. For many IHSs such as, for example, desktop IHSs, the HDD is the dominant thermal component in the system and has the largest effect on the IHS acoustics during idle. When the IHS is developed, the thermal curves to cool the IHS components are calibrated for the worst case scenario to ensure that for any configuration of the IHS, the components will be cooled. This unnecessarily burdens the cost and acoustics of the system when, for example, the IHS is capable of housing an HDD that requires more cooling than the HDD that the IHS actually houses. In that situation, the fan speed controllers will be calibrated to provide more cooling than is necessary for the HDD, resulting in, for example, poor acoustical performance when the IHS is idling.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved hard drive temperature control absent the disadvantages discussed above.